


Ciel D'Oro

by CenozoicSynapsid



Category: Il nome della rosa | The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco
Genre: Case Fic, Gen, Monks, Murder Mystery, Polyphonic Music, Scholastic Philosophy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:09:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28092936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CenozoicSynapsid/pseuds/CenozoicSynapsid
Summary: The second book of Adso of Melk, in which is described his journey to the city of Pavia, together with a description of the cathedral which is named San Piero Ciel D'Oro, and of the tombs of Augustine and Boethius and other famous men who are buried there. Containing also a narrative of a most infamous murder, and the investigations of this matter which were made by the learned friar William of Baskerville, employing methods of deduction. And in addition some discourses on music sung in one voice or in many voices, namely which of these is most fitting and proper for the celebration of the Holy Offices and the most solemn feast of the birthday of our Saviour.
Comments: 27
Kudos: 26
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Ciel D'Oro

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ermingarde](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ermingarde/gifts).



Since God has lengthened the term of my life, I turn again to my task, for did not Benedict say that when a monk begins any good thing, he must pray to carry it through to a conclusion? And indeed, my task is not yet ended, although I have already written many things concerning my travels with William of Baskerville and his part in the struggle between the Emperor Louis and Jacques of Cahors who styled himself Pope John XXII, and of many other prodigies and infamous deeds which weigh less in the accounts of historians, but which still stand vivid and distinct in memory, since I beheld them with my own eyes.

I am old and weary now and have prayed with Simeon, nunc dimittis servum tuum, Domine. But I will set this aside, for although no man knows the hour of his own death, it is not fitting to ask for a reward until one’s task is finished. Instead I will pray, Lord, to preserve me until I have written in full the story of my journey to the city of Pavia, and the things that befell me there, for the greater instruction of those who come after me.

And I will set these things down just as I remember them, narrating the lies and deceptions of others as they were spoken to me, as Jerome copied the errors of Origen and of the heresiarch Alexander alongside his own words, leaving it to the judgment of the reader whether their ideas should be accepted or not. For even Solomon, the wisest of all men, wrote in remonstration: Do not be wise in your own eyes, but fear the Lord.

**I**

_Concerning the deductive skill of William, the character of Gregory of Strasse, and a kind of vulgar music called ‘motetus’._

In the first week after we left the abbey of which I have already written, we traveled among the hills with no fixed aim or destination beyond the vague intention to travel southwest, along which route William hoped to hear news of the Emperor. It was a lonely country we traveled in, steep and sparsely settled, and there were but few travelers abroad in that season.

I will pass over our days of travel to tell more quickly of how we came to meet Gregory of Strasse, with whom the rest of this tale is concerned. That day was a hard one, for when we rose, snow was already falling, and it continued to come down at intervals throughout the day, piling up not too deeply, but making for treacherous footing nonetheless, so that we had to dismount from our horses and lead them. But though we were footsore and wet by midday, the snow lying on the ground at least offered William the pleasure of doing what he loved best, which was by exercising his reason to discern the attributes of those who had passed before us from the tracks they had left behind.

“See here,” he said, pointing to some marks in the road. “What do you make of these?”

I saw from this that he was beginning to recover from the oppressive humor which the physicians term _melancholia_ , and which had affected us both ever since our escape from the great fire. Examining the tracks, therefore, I did my best to answer him according to the methods of deduction which he had taught me.

“Two men passed this way, and two or three horses.”

“And from this we conclude?”

“Their errand is important, or why would they be traveling in such a season?”

“Very good,” William responded, smiling, and I felt glad to see him so restored to himself. “And what is that errand?”

“I do not know,” I admitted.

“You see here, Adso, the tracks of three horses, but the footsteps of only two men. They intend to move rapidly, since they brought a spare horse so that each one could rest in turn. I judge from this that they carry a message. One of them has heels to his boots, and here, where he brushed against the hedge, we see a scarlet thread from his cloak, the height of which shows us also that he is a tall man. The other has only leather-soled shoes and a staff to lean on. Therefore, a nobleman with his servant. And naturaliter, such a man carries messages for a person of importance. Besides this he is a kind man, but lacking in patience, which as Aquinas says is a virtue allied to fortitude, and perhaps also in discernment.”

“I see now how these signs can tell us about the man’s physical form and his clothing. But how can you draw conclusions about his character?”

“With great ease, for a man acts in accord with his character, and indeed, as a tree is named for the fruits it yields, a man is called kind if he acts kindly and wicked if he acts wickedly. Therefore such qualities leave physical signs, no less visible than the marks of a man’s hands and his feet. Here, we can see a bit down the road that the servant stumbled and began to fall. And here we see his steps no longer, from which we conclude that his master kindly allowed him to ride, though it is muddy and the horses must be tired. But as they rode, we see that the master’s footsteps turned aside in places, here to the left and here the right, as if he feared himself lost, or wished to shorten his journey by leaving the road, though as Augustine says, the patient man bears hardship with an equal mind, intending by endurance to gain better things for the future.”

Indeed, all this was true concerning Gregory of Strasse, who as you will shortly read, had many opportunities in the coming week to show both his faults and his virtues. I have no need to tell you about what has become of him in these latter years in which, as you will have heard, he has by turns enjoyed much fame and suffered many reversals. But I still remember him as we came upon him in the road not very much later: a man tall and heavily built, inclined to be red in the face with cold or temper. The face was a buffoon’s face, but the eyes within it were dark and sharp. As he spoke, he cast his gaze shrewdly from place to place, as if worried that someone might be standing just out of sight and plotting to cheat him.

William called out to him as we approached, and since we were evidently traveling in the same direction, we went on together. I could hear the two of them conversing, but since night was beginning to fall, I began to find the cold oppressive, and I did not attend to what they were saying, rather seeking within my own mind to apply that endurance of which I have already written.

As I walked, I thought of the solemn birthday of our Saviour which was soon approaching. Cicero teaches that memory is like a great abode of signs, in which thought passes most naturally from one to another when they are closely connected. In this manner, my mind was drawn to the chant for the third Sunday of Advent which had just passed, _Gaudete in Domino semper_ , and my walking fell into the metrum of the chant, though I could hear no outward sound beyond the low murmur of William’s conversation with Gregory and the crunch of snow beneath my feet. Through this holy exercise, my feet were strengthened and I took leave of discomfort in contemplation of the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.

It was about the hour of compline when I began to hear the sound of distant music, which drifted through the dark trees around the road as if summoned by my thoughts.

“Do you hear, master? There must be a church by the wayside ahead of us, where we can stop to thank God for our deliverance.”

William shook his head. “Heaven keep us from such a church, Adso. Do you not hear the words they are singing?”

“I cannot make them out. But the notes fall together most pleasingly in concord, and my spirit is drawn upward as if I were hearing the holy offices.”

“So you are, after a fashion. The vulgar call such a song _motetus_ ; one of them is chanting a line of the offices, but the discantus is nothing but a drinking song, and above that yet another singer is complaining of the fair Marion, who has broken his heart.”

I listened more closely, and indeed as we drew nearer, I began to hear some of the words:

 _Tam pro papa quam pro rege_  
_bibunt omnes sine lege._

At the same time, another voice was chanting a Psalm, and a third singing a melody in Tuscan which I did not understand, but which I did not doubt was the love song that William had spoken of. All three were confused and overlaid upon one another to form a single harmonia, so that I could not follow one singer for more than a line or two before I was caught up by one of the others. In truth, I could scarcely tell which voice was sounding which note. Yet the effect was pleasing, for the conjunction of the three formed a sweet concord, and it seemed horrible that such a melody should carry words so vain and impious.

“Is it not wicked to make such a mockery of holy things?” I asked.

“Certainly it troubles me to hear sacred prayers joined with such nonsense. Tollens ergo membra Christi, faciant membra meretricis? But compared to what evils we have seen lately— and those from men who ought to have known far better— well, let the simple have their amusements. We will offer them the chance to wipe out some of their misdeeds with charity. Tonight, Franciscan or Benedictine makes no difference; we must both be poor together and sleep in the stable.”

A while later we finally reached the rustic farmhouse from which the song was coming. Gregory and his servant went within to buy themselves wine and merriment with the Emperor’s silver. William, as he had promised, begged us a jug of water and a crust of bread, and emerged with the welcome news that we were not far from the city of Pavia, which they promised we should reach within another day. We slept wrapped in our habits, huddled among the horses for warmth. When I woke the next morning, I saw their gentle eyes peering down at me, as if I had slept in the very manger where our Saviour was born.

**II**

_In which we come to the city of Pavia, discussing along the way the saintly men who are buried there as well as some less saintly inhabitants, and finally a troubling dream._

Of our journey to Pavia there is little worth telling, except that along the way, we learned the nature of Gregory’s errand. He was, as we discovered, a messenger of the Emperor Louis. And once William had given an account of the debate over the poverty of Christ, adding that he inclined to the opinion of the Imperial theologians rather than the Pope, he became more inclined to trust us. From this point on, he and William filled their time with discourse, for although he was rude in expression and ignorant of scholarship, he had traveled to many countries and had much experience of the court. And it was in talking of this that he told us about the task he had been charged with.

“Christmas is coming very soon, and the Emperor wants to hear mass as he rides south. Now, if the Pope is a touch heretical, the Emperor must be very pious, right?”

I expected William to object to this argument, since the conclusion had as far as I could see no connection to the premises. But he only nodded and waved his hand as if to ask quid sequitur.

“Naturally, such a pious man can’t go to mass in a village church, where the priest has holes in his surplice and can barely read the psalter. No, he wants to kneel down in a cathedral and accept the host from a gold paten, and hear the sermon from a bishop in white linen, and he wants a choir of monks to sing, all in the new style, what they call ars nova.”

Gregory shook his head in frustration.

“I’m only a dullard, and I don’t know the new style from the old one, but I’ve been sent on to Pavia to see to the arrangements. With this weather, I’ll be nearly two weeks late.”

He sighed.

“I hope the canons have everything in hand already. It’s Christmas, after all. They have to have planned some sort of a Mass.”

Since Gregory had not been to Pavia before, William described it as we went on, primarily its cathedral and crypt, in which lie the remains of St. Syrus, who brought Jesus the loaves of barley bread and the fishes which he used to feed the five thousand, and Boethius the philosopher and musician, martyred by order of the emperor Theodoric, and most of all Saint Augustine of Hippo. Indeed, the cathedral was administered by an order of canons who followed the rule of Augustine, and had kept his tomb for centuries. But according to William, this was now in dispute, for another order of monks, led by one William of Cremona, had appealed to the Pope for a grant of authority over the tomb, taking his part against the Imperial theologians. From what he said, it now looked as though they might prevail, although, as Gregory soon responded, any grant they were given would be meaningless so long as the Imperial party remained in control of the city.

Despite all these conflicts, I was gladdened at the thought of seeing the city of Pavia and the graves of so many famous men. And also I was drawn despite myself to the tales which novices used to tell in the dormitory at Melk, that in Pavia resided women of such exceptional beauty, and more exceptional yet, such scant virtue, that had that chaste and abstemious hunter Hippolytus of the tragedies been there for only a day, he would have gone away without the slightest shred of his virtue remaining. But, though I was curious to see such women, I remonstrated with myself that such thoughts were not proper for a monk and resolved to content myself with the relics of the cathedral.

In any case, it was a long and chilly journey we had, which cooled my desire for anything except hot food and bed. We began to see the tower of the church emerging above the pines while the sun was yet high above us, and in every little village we passed, the peasants assured us that we were no more than an hour or two distant from the city. But the roads were clotted with mud and melting snow, so that we had to walk the horses the entire way, and by the time we reached the gates, we could hear the muffled chime of the vespers bell through the damp evening air.

William, who had visited the town before, led us through dark and narrow streets in which I would surely have been lost at the first turning. I saw no women, beautiful or otherwise, or at least no people I could identify as women, since those few who were still abroad wore shapeless cloaks of coarse reddish cloth against the chilly air.

By the time we reached the cathedral almshouse, it was fully dark. William knocked firmly at the door, which was soon opened by an old white-haired man. I saw with surprise that he wore the black habit of a Benedictine rather than the robe of a canon.

“Welcome, in nomine Christi,” he said, ushering us inside. “I am Matteo of San Vicento, and though I am not part of their order, the canons here permit me to run their almshouse, since my brothers and I have been guests here so long.”

He sounded regretful, and William asked him whether it was through some misfortune that he had come to stay here.

“So it was, so it was,” he said, shaking his head. “There was a great plague which carried off the Abbot and most of the brothers, requiescant cum sanctis. Of the whole congregation, only we four survived to bury the dead. But we must bless the Lord whether he gives or takes away, and I am very grateful to the canons to permit us to stay among them. Anyway, I should not tire you with stories while you have still had nothing to eat or drink. We had our supper before nightfall, as is the rule, but there is still some bread and cheese and cabbage with olive oil.”

William assured him that this would be perfectly adequate, and Matteo set it before us skeptically. But Gregory fell upon it ravenously enough to dispel any doubt, and indeed, I suspect William and I did justice to it as well, since during our journey, we had lived more or less by begging. As we ate, Matteo spoke courteously to us, apologizing for the absence of the other members of his order.

“Enrico is singing with the canons’ choir,” he said, a frown seeming to cross his pale face. “Denis is distributing alms, and should return soon now that it is dark. Vinnianus and I are old, and though we have chosen a life of labor, we cannot stay awake so late on winter nights anymore. But I will go and wake him. You four, being our guests, must take the beds, and we brothers will sleep on the floor.”

Gregory attempted to resist this offer, but Matteo could not be persuaded away from what he said was his duty, and it was not long afterwards that we took his advice. The beds were comfortable enough, but I was sore from the road and slept poorly. At first I dreamed that I stood, along with Saint Augustine, upon a wooden rule which was the symbol of faith, and at each end of this rule were groups of men in clerical dress, tugging and pulling at it to get possession, so that it lurched disquietingly up and down. Then the Saint knelt down and showed me that it was not one single piece of wood on which we were standing, but many, all cunningly laced together so that they seemed solid. As soon as he revealed the joints and tenons which united them, however, they were loosened so that our legs were pulled this way and that, and meanwhile I heard the voices of the men at either end raised in loud disputation around me.

“There is nothing pious in this before-singing and after-singing, in-between singing and up-and-down singing. A man has one pair of ears to listen to one thing at once, and that one thing should be the plainchant. All the rest that you seem so concerned about is just effete mewing, more likely to cause titillation between the legs than a sense of devotion in the brain!”

This was a deep, growling voice, and after it came a commotion of replies in which I could make out no words, except one which trailed off with “and _Viderunt omnes_ ,” which is the gradual for the mass of Christmas day.

Then there was a great noise as of a door slamming, and I felt the rule breaking beneath me as I, and Saint Augustine, toppled off it. I stirred to find myself awake for a moment. But turning over again, I allowed exhaustion to overtake me and so slept again until morning.

**III**

_The marvelous things which I saw in the cathedral of San Piero in Pavia, both good and ill._

We rose at dawn, as we were accustomed. In the light of morning, the common room of the almshouse appeared smaller than it had the previous night, or perhaps it was merely the number of people who were crowded into it. Along with William and myself, I counted Gregory and his serving man Peter, the elderly monk Matteo, and two other men in Benedictine dress.

Although I would prefer to spend my last years recording those parts of what transpired which are most profitable to learn from, passing over the voices and faces of men whose earthly forms have long vanished from the world, I must give some description here of Vinnianus, the eldest of the brothers of San Vicento. For Matteo had called him an old man, and so you might imagine him, as I had the night before, as being feeble and bent. In fact he was brawny and barrel-chested, and though the hair around his tonsure was white and whispy, his beard was still shot through with streaks of foxy red. In speech he was at all times fierce, harsh and intense, putting his whole strength into his voice, as Quintilian prescribes for sounding of the call to arms, and his tongue still held a touch of accent from his native Hibernia. As I heard him speak, I understood that it was his voice that had intruded into my dream last night with its talk of before-singing and after-singing.

“We will miss Matins if we wait any longer,” he was saying.

“But Enrico—” said the second man, whom I learned later was called Denis of Lille. He was tall and thin as a stork, and his robe flapped around him as loosely as if it hung upon a scarecrow.

“If he is still in bed, I will go wake him,” said Matteo, but a moment later he returned shaking his head.

“He’s not there,” he said. “Perhaps he has gone to church ahead of us.”

“As he should,” growled Vinnianus, “the better to repent of his sins. And it is past time we went as well.”

So it was that I got my first sight of San Pietro, and as I walked in, I saw suddenly why it is called Ciel D’Oro, the Golden Sky. For above me a radiant mosaic spread across the ceiling, whose tiles glittered like living gold, like the rays of the sun. And indeed gold is called the most precious of all substances, which being the symbol of wisdom and kingship, was most appropriately offered to the newborn Christ. And gold and silver are costly not only on account of the usefulness of the vessels and other like things made from them, but also on account of the excellence and purity of their substance. For the true metal has the property by nature of making people joyful, and is helpful medicinally against certain maladies. Moreover real gold persists in its condition of purity however long it is employed, just as the saints persist in their virtue without being tarnished by the world.

Upon the right wall were pictured angels in flight, and above them the throne of the Most High. And before this throne was pictured a kneeling man, holding in his hands his own heart, which was pierced through with a flaming sword. From this I recognized Saint Augustine who wrote that his heart was pierced through with charity, and the words of God had been branded upon his entrails. And alongside him was Saint Syrus holding up a loaf of bread, and Boethius kneeling between two women. On one side of him stood Lady Philosophy holding a notebook in her left hand, and brandishing in her right a staff. With this she was threatening and driving away the other woman, Queen Fortuna, who was distinguished by the wheel which she is continually spinning, so as to raise up men from obscurity and just as quickly throw them down.

On the left wall, meanwhile, were depicted the torments of hell. Here the mosaicist had shown a host of demons flapping about among a great multitude of sinners. Some of them seized on murderers and stabbed them with knives, while others forced bags of gold down the throats of usurers, tore at the tongues of blasphemers, clawed at the pudenda of adulterers and fornicators, stripped the clerical robes from simoniacs and lashed at their bare backs, and cut in two the bodies of heretics, whose false doctrines divide the church. On the wall closest to the entrance, the mouth of hell gaped open like a great fanged serpent, and through this mouth, demons with whips were herding the sinners to be swallowed.

Above them I saw another throne, upon which the Son of Man ought to have been seated in judgment, but in his place was nothing but a dirty sheet. William murmured to me that the repair and upkeep of the church was the responsibility of the canons, and it was for this reason, as well as their adherence to the Empire, that the Pope seemed inclined towards the suit of William of Cremona. For just as a man who does not know true gold from earth and base metal may dig a mine wherein, mixing all things together, he remains ignorant of the treasures which are laid up within it, so churchmen who lack wisdom fail to understand the true sense of the scriptures they read. In this way, even faith, the most brilliant of all jewels granted to the church, becomes dimmed and corrupted. And the outward sign of this is that the precious things entrusted to them fall into neglect.

As we filed to our places, I perceived from the muttering of my companions that Enrico was not in his customary place. Their distress, it seemed, was shared by the canons, one of whom met us at the door and enquired in a low whisper where he might be.

“Nobody else can sing the triplum,” he hissed urgently.

I saw Vinnianus move beneath his cowl as if he would speak, but Matteo laid a hand on his arm.

“He is not here,” he said calmly. “We must use the regular chant today, whether we prefer it or not.”

He gave the last few words a special emphasis, as if to indicate that it was a matter of some disagreement, and I resolved to ask William about it later. But this left my mind as I attended to the Psalms and the readings for the day, which we intoned together with great fervor. And in fact, I did not have time to recall it once the service was complete, since afterwards the canon who had met us at the door returned to us.

“I see you are guests,” he said. “My name is Eustace, and among my other duties, I am the sacristan. If you like, I can show you the crypt, and the relics and treasures we keep here.”

William assented eagerly to this proposal and the two chattered like excited novices as we walked toward the door, telling stories of the saintly virtues of Augustine and the others who were buried there.

“We will need a lantern,” said Eustace, handing it to me as he worked the lock with the heavy iron key.

“Go ahead of us, hold it high up, and walk slowly or you will stumble over the tombs.”

The air, already chilly in the church, was nearly freezing in the crypt, and the narrow stone stairs were worn slick from the tread of many centuries of feet. Before me, I could see the shadows of the stone tombs, upon the nearest of which I saw carved doves, crosses, angels, fishes and other signs of that eternal life into which the sleepers of Pavia trusted to awake. And I pray that upon that day, I and all who read this shall greet them in joy.

“The tomb of Augustine is towards the back,” said Eustace. “I will lead you there.”

“No, wait,” begged William. “Show us first the tomb of Boethius, the master from whom I have learned logic and dialectic, and whose Consolations have comforted me in my difficulties.”

“That is easily done, and I commend you for your choice of masters. Augustine is, of course, the founder of our order, and therefore I rank him above all others, but we also make a special study of music, and as you know, Boethius was as great a master of music as of the dialectic. Now, hold the lamp a little to the left and pass between those two tombs— the nearer is that of John of Carmagnola, who was sacristan before me, may God rest his soul, and—”

Eustace trailed off uncertainly. Lying before a great stone tomb in the far wall was a huddled mass, indistinct in the flickering light of the lamp. I fear that, at that moment, the lamp was flickering even more than formerly, not only from movement of the air but from the shaking of my own unsteady hand. For I had seen such sights only a few weeks before, and, I realized now, had not only hoped but expected to see no more of them. Before the tomb lay the body of a man, wrapped in a black Benedictine habit stained yet blacker by a great, dark pool of blood.

**IV**

_In which William asks questions about the murder, and in response learns a great deal concerning controversies in music, but little else._

“When I find the man who did this, I will tear him in two like a rabbit,” said Gregory, pacing back and forth in the square in front of the cathedral. “I’ll break him in half and give the Emperor his spine for a walking stick! Bad enough to be drowning in mud for two weeks and end up with barely a day to make arrangements, bad enough that these idiots can’t fix the gaping hole in their roof, and now murder? I’ll show them murder!”

“Be reasonable,” said William gently. “Surely the service can still proceed without this one man?”

“According to the Prior, this ‘one man’ knew a part of the service that none of the others did. From what I gathered, mass in the new style is sung in parts, and this one was especially complicated, with three voices singing different things at once. The highest one is called ‘triplum’, and that’s the part this Enrico had practiced, in addition to composing many of the melodies himself. It apparently takes such skill as a singer that none of the canons had managed to master it. Only his friend Denis has any experience in singing it, and apparently he doesn’t do it nearly well.”

“Well, he had better practice it before tomorrow.”

“Yes, and I’ll stand over him with a whip if it makes sure he’s ready by the time the Imperial Court is here. The Prior is just as keen to make an impression, thank Christ. He told me William of Cremona wrote a long refutation of the Imperial theologians last month. He’s in Avignon now, angling for an audience with the Pope. Without Imperial support, the canons will be gone by New Year’s.”

Gregory’s pacing intensified.

“The real problem is who killed him. The Emperor can’t hear mass with a murderer lurking over his shoulder like Cain in a mystery play. But how am I supposed to figure out who did it?”

“As to that, have you examined the dead body yet? I have, and there are several odd things about the way he was left which might help you to form hypotheses.”

“And what are those?”

“Well, for a start, he died of a stab wound, but he’d been beaten on the bare back as well, since his skin shows the marks of a whip of some kind. Yet for a man so roughly handled, it does not look as though he fought back, since his hands were hardly injured.”

“Did you find a whip in the church?”

“So we did, and that is another curious circumstance. It was the cord of a Benedictine’s habit, in which a few knots had been tied. Not his own, that was around his waist when we found him. What does that tell you?”

“That it was one of his own brothers who killed him,” said Gregory, with dour satisfaction. “Bad for him, but good for us, since there are only three of them to look over. Find the habit with the missing cord—”

“Non sequitur,” said William. “Adso, how many habits does a Benedictine have, according to the rule?”

“Only two,” I said, “But there is always a store of spares for guests and strangers.”

“One of which is missing its belt, I suspect,” said William. “And there are any number of people who might have stolen one. Nevertheless, your hypothesis offers a place to start. Now, if you are right, what can we say about what happened? Enrico went into the church with one of the others—”

“Master,” I broke in, remembering my dream of the night before, and in brief I told William and Gregory all I had heard or imagined hearing.

“Dear Adso,” said William, “This is a stroke of luck indeed!”

“Then Vinnianus must be the murderer?”

“Not at all. They might have quarreled about something else— about the mass, for instance. Nor do you know Enrico’s voice, since you never saw him alive. Vinnianus might have been talking to someone else. But certainly we shall learn more from questioning him than mere supposition.”

Vinnianus, however, sat braced in the seat opposite Gregory and glared at him as though preparing to do battle.

“Certainly I quarreled with him. He and Denis are falling into a grievous error. At San Vicento, we used to sing the plainchant, as has always been the custom, reciting the holy words clearly and with gravity. This is how the Church has always prayed: speaking with a single voice, as we have only one God and one faith. Here, the choir insists on ornamenting the mass with all sorts of frilly nonsense, and Enrico and Denis have started to imitate them. I showed them a letter from the Pope which forbids this new style in very harsh terms. I even copied it out for them in my own hand, so that they could read it more carefully.”

He rose and withdrew a page from beneath a lectern in the corner, from which he recited with a fluency that suggested the words were very familiar to him:

“Some disciples of a new school, while they apply themselves to measuring time, they attempt to invent their own melodies with new notes instead of choosing to sing the ancient ones, ecclesiastical canticles are sung in semi-breves and minims, are riddled with grace notes. For they sunder the melodies with hockets, loosen them with descants, trample them sometimes with three-part polyphonies and motets in the vernacular to such a degree that, now and then, they despise the fundamentals of the Antiphonary and the Gradual, ignore the foundation upon which they are building, disregard the modes, which they do not reckon, but which rather they confuse, when, owing to the multitude of these very notes, the modest ascents and the moderate descents of plainchant, by which the modes themselves are distinguished from one another, are obfuscated. For they run, and they rest not; they fill their ears with impertinence, and they relieve them not; they imitate with gestures that which they have mustered, by which gestures devotion that is to be desired is contemned, and lasciviousness that is to be shunned is made manifest.”

“The canons, however, carried on in their impious ways, saying that the letter prohibited only lascivious and inappropriate singing, and their style, on the other hand, was simply the organum, in which one part of the choir sings slightly higher than the other. But the proper organum has none of these tropes and part-singing!”

He slammed his hand on the table.

“What they are doing is a contrivance of the Devil, which Enrico refused to abandon!”

“Then what happened last night?”

“I rebuked him, as the rule commands. That much you seem to have heard, and I don’t deny that I raised my voice to him. He replied to me rudely, and I was so angry that I went out into the square for a while to walk about in the cold. I don’t know where he went after that.”

“Do you think he is telling the truth?” I asked William, as Vinnianus’s heavy footsteps receded from the doorway.

“I don’t know. It would be a convenient lie for him to tell, if he were lying, for nobody who was not himself there can prove whether he was stalking up and down in the square, or whether he is lying and took Enrico by force into the church. But mere possibility does not make it true.”

“How do we find out, then?”

“We will see what the others say. Perhaps Denis will have something to tell us, since all the noise last night must have wakened him.”

We found the tall Frenchman in the cathedral bakery. He was shoving loaves of bread into the oven with a long wooden paddle. With the oven door open, the fire within blasted heat into the room, a marvelous comfort after the chill of the outdoors. Servants and lay brothers were busy kneading and shaping loaves. 

“Alms for the poor folk of the town, which the church distributes before Prime,” Denis explained, wiping his forehead.

“It is a good service you do here,” said William. “And you must be tired already, from the disturbance last night.”

“What disturbance?” said Denis. “The murder?”

“Not only the murder, which happened in the church, as it seems, but a quarrel in the almshouse itself. Vinnianus says he had harsh words for Enrico, who insisted on singing in the choir with the canons.”

“He condemns what he does not understand,” said Denis. “Matteo, too. Have you heard them celebrate a mass yet? It’s as if the angels themselves sang together, each note melting into the next so that three or four voices can become a single instrument. Enrico and I both spent time studying the part books to learn the neumes for the different parts of the service, and Enrico even wrote down new tropes of his own devising, but Vinnianus wouldn’t have it, and eventually I had to back down.”

“But Enrico would not?”

“He said the gifts of God must not be squandered.”

“But as to the disturbance last night,” William went on. “Were you not woken by them shouting at each other?”

Denis’s eyes flickered toward the corners of the room.

“I was,” he said. “But since none of it concerned me, I went back to sleep again, and I don’t remember what was said.”

“Though you were sleeping on a cold floor, with no door between you and the dispute?”

“Well, then, I lay there and tried not to interfere.”

“What did they say to one another?”

“Vinnianus entreated Enrico to reconsider, saying that he was the senior brother of our congregation remaining and thus had the authority of an Abbot, and Enrico said he did not, since he had not been chosen.”

“And then?”

“They both went out.”

“Both of them?” William looked sharply at Denis, who paused as if considering for a moment. “My eyes were closed. It might only have been one of them.”

“So it might, so it might,” said William carelessly. “Was it the Christmas mass in particular that they fought over?”

“Christmas?” Denis seemed genuinely confused by this. “Why would you think so?”

“Adso tells me he heard them discussing the gradual, _viderunt omnes fines terrae_ , which is chanted on Christmas.”

“Ah, I remember. Yes, Enrico wanted to sing this gradual before the Emperor, but Vinnianus objected.”

“Well, it is no matter, since the poor man is dead now,” said William, though I suspected he was not being sincere. Making an excuse, he led me back into the square, though I was sorry to leave the warmth and delicious smells of the bakery to come back out into the cold.

“What do you think now?” I asked.

“He’s lying,” said William, “But you must surely have concluded that by yourself. What is more interesting is that, by lying, he reveals the lies of Vinnianus, whose story was perfectly plausible on its own. For if Vinnianus was telling the truth, Denis would have no reason to hide anything, and then he would have told the same story, that Vinnianus stamped out into the square while Enrico went back to bed and crept out later on.”

“Why should they both lie? If one of them is the killer, shouldn’t the other be an honest monk, since, as you said, a man’s character determines his deeds?”

At this, William, as he did so often, turned to argue the contrary of a point he himself had made a few days earlier.

“Men want many things, dear Adso, and their minds are drawn this way and that by troops of contradictory phantasms, thinking in one moment only of selfless love and, in the next of the vain pleasures of the flesh which burn like flames. Therefore, a man’s character can be called a mixture, in which are mingled many things both good and evil. Or, if we know men by their fruits, let us say that men are like grafted trees, with sweet fruit on one branch and sour on another, so that it is uncertain what name to give them. But since we know we have been lied to, we will find Eustace the sacristan and investigate this business of the keys; then I will feel closer to a solution.”

**V**

_Containing explanations of the nature of divine virtue and evil, and what is meant by ‘hocketing’, and finally the reason Enrico went into the church._

We found Eustace in the cathedral treasury, in the company of Gregory and his servant Peter. Gregory had his sword at his side, which is not usual in church, but seemed to reassure Eustace as he stood among so many precious objects. He was lifting each one and examining it, then marking on a slate which he carried, and though he was handling the relics of saints and the holy vessels used at the altar, he did not seem comforted by their presence as he ought to have been.

“This is terrible, terrible!” he exclaimed. “First the repairs of the roof over the north transept have been dragging on for months, and we have spent so much on those rogues we hired to fix it that I think by now we could have plugged the hole with tiles of solid silver. And then to find ourselves robbed! Someone has taken two candlesticks and a reliquary of Saint Monica, a small one, admittedly, and the relic was only a finger bone, but still, it is through such instruments that we entreat the intervention of the blessed saints, and for Augustine’s order to lose the aid of his own mother, who converted him from paganism—”

William broke in.

“Do the keys of the church open this room as well?”

“No,” moaned Eustace, lifting a bundle of heavy iron keys from his waist. “See, this one is for the west door of the church. Here is the east door, and this one opens both the crypt and the treasury. This key ought to open the tower, where we keep the part-books for the choir and the candles for services and the rope for ringing the bell, but the lock for that one is rusted, so the prior allows us to leave it unlocked. Do you think the thieves—”

“I think they would rather steal silver candlesticks than candles,” said William. “But how many keys to the crypt are there?”

“Mine, and the prior’s, and a spare one,” said Eustace, numbering them on his fingers.

“Which is missing,” put in Gregory. “These idiots kept it in the prior’s desk, where anyone could have taken it. I hope Peter guards the keys of heaven better than that, since I’d hate to have the Devil wandering in and out of heaven whenever he pleases, the way these thieves have run free in the cathedral.”

“Let us not concern ourselves with the security of heaven, since our own seems sufficiently challenging,” observed William mildly. “Tell me, are there any valuable things kept in the crypt?”

“Nothing that can be moved,” said Eustace. “Although one could argue that the bones of the saints have such virtue that they are more precious by far. There was a certain blind man whom my predecessor permitted to pray before the tomb of Augustine, and whose sight was restored. In addition I have heard that the saint will intercede for the lustful, the mad and those who are driven to torment themselves by eating grass or mud and behaving as if they were beasts.”

“Virtues indeed! Well are we commanded to store up treasure in heaven, and not on earth,” said William. For a moment, he seemed about to continue with the quote, ubi fures effodiunt et furantur, and indeed, I noticed that his gaze rested for a second on the great store of gold and silver that surrounded us, some of which had so lately been stolen.

“Virtues aside, I would be pleased to know why he was killed down there,” muttered Gregory.

“Perhaps just to keep him from being discovered until afternoon. But if I were to guess, I would say the reason concerned Boethius the musician, since much about this business seems to revolve around music.”

“Concerned how?”

“Well, that I do not know yet. But Cicero says that the investigator should keep in mind many sorts of questions: what crime was committed, the people involved, the testimony of witnesses, and so forth, and when one question fails, we pursue another. So we must either find out why they were in the crypt, or who has the key, or why the dead man had stripes on his back. But we do not need to figure out all of these things, because as Cicero goes on to say, each one informs all the others, so that in the end these many questions may have only one answer between them.”

“What will you do, then?”

“For the moment, I think, we will talk to Brother Matteo. We may hope to get the truth out of him, but if not, we can at least obtain a complete selection of lies, which I have sometimes found almost as useful.”

For the rest of the day, however, we did nothing but run back and forth looking for him. Matteo, apparently, took to heart the injunction to work as well as to pray; the cathedral servants directed us to the storage room, where we were informed he had just set off to the cathedral schoolroom. Arriving there, we found a pupil who told us he had brought a new commentary on the Sentences for them to read, and then left to carry dinner to the men repairing the roof of the transept. When we finally caught sight of him, he was climbing down a long ladder, which William ran to hold steady as he stepped back onto the ground.

“Gratias tibi,” he said, breathing heavily. “These are difficult times, but God’s work continues.”

“Difficult times indeed,” said William sympathetically. “Have you eaten yourself? It is nearly Prime, and perhaps, as guests in the almshouse, we can impose on you to sit with us at our evening meal.”

“That would be welcome,” admitted Matteo, and as we walked back to the almshouse together, William began to converse with him. I had seen him before applying the skills he had learned as an inquisitor, beginning with a harmless subject and then bringing the topic around by turns to the topic he had intended all along. Matteo, not being on his guard against such tricks, fell readily into speaking of the dead man, and after he had pronounced grace over our meal of bread and salt fish, he continued to answer William’s questions, mentioning that Enrico had been a novice along with Denis, and that he had been ill with the plague, but not died of it.

“Since then, God forgive him, he felt that he had been saved for some special purpose, and I fear that was the reason he was overly proud of his skill as a singer. The canons praised and rewarded him for this, and taught him all sorts of musical devices, while what he needed to learn was humility and self-control.”

“Vinnianus called the canons’ music a contrivance of the Devil.”

Matteo frowned.

“He could put it less harshly, I think. Soft words turn away wrath, after all, and it is best not to stir up discord within the body of Christ. But he is right that it is not fitting. There is no room in the Holy Offices for hockets and minims and such things.”

“Can you explain to me what these things are?” I burst out. “You and Vinnianus keep repeating these names, which I understand in so far as they must be parts of the new style, but to me they are merely nomina nuda without any substance.”

“Is it not enough to understand that they are anathema?”

“There is more to be said of a thing than whether it is good or evil! Surely adultery is evil, and heresy is evil, but this does not mean that adultery is heresy.”

Matteo sighed.

“What good is it to make these distinctions? What is important is that good is good, and evil is evil. You know, I am sure, that God is a perfect whole, without any variation.”

“I have heard this,” I said. “I was taught that God always exists, and is present everywhere in space and time. Nor does he have any limbs or organs composed of diverse substances. ”

“That is only a part of it. In truth, God has no properties at all, and what we term the virtues of God are all in essence the same thing, which is to say, the entirety of his nature. When we speak of divine mercy, divine justice, divine goodness, the unlearned imagine that these are all different things, so that God is at one time inclined to be merciful, but at another time just, or that he expresses these properties in different ways.”

“Is that not the case?” I asked, “For is it not divine mercy that gives fortunes to the poor and makes sick men recover, while divine justice expresses itself in plagues and famines?”

“But in that case, they would admit of separation, so that we could imagine within the substance of God some element which is mercy, another which is justice, still another which is goodness, and then these could be broken apart, as the alchemists refine the elements of matter in their alembics, and we could conceive of a being wholly merciful, but not just, a being entirely just, but not good, a being supremely good, but not merciful, and so on. But this cannot be so, for how could supreme goodness be lacking in mercy, or be in conflict with it? If it were lacking in anything, it would not be entirely good, but flawed. Therefore we see that God is unity without distinction, so that in truth plagues and famines are as much tokens of his mercy as windfalls and recoveries.”

“But what does this have to do with hockets and minims, which is what I was asking?”

“Only this, Adso, that good is properly speaking a single thing, and since evil is simply the absence of that thing, therefore every kind of evil is similar, since each one of them is lacking in every virtue at once. And in fact, do not heretics challenge the unity of the marriage bond, by which two become one, while adulterers make light of a divine sacrament? So, in the end, are the two not alike? Evil is disorganized, a kind of chaos which seems to contain infinite variety, but proves in the end to hold nothing at all. Those who delve and burrow into filth, seeking to define some structure within it, fail to understand its nature. It is filth precisely because it contains nothing tangible, and those who try to explain it merely make themselves filthy.”

“I approve entirely of what you say,” put in William drily, “But in fact, the words do have meanings, whether they are anathema or not. A hocket is a kind of hiccoughing in which two singers alternate notes with one another, and a minim is a fast syllable which is not counted in the metrum. And it may profit us to know such things, since Enrico was killed by a specific man, for a specific purpose, and before he died, he had an argument about music with Vinnianus in this very room.”

“Vinnianus may be gruff, but he is a good man, and wouldn’t kill one of his brothers.”

“I do not think, as you do, that men must be all good or all evil, but in any case I agree with you. That is not what I think happened.”

“What, then?”

“Before we discuss that, you must tell me one thing. Do you have the key to the crypt, or to the church door only?”

Matteo stared at him, but William, as the inquisitors had trained him, fixed him with his gaze and went on in a harsh voice.

“I know already that it was not only Vinnianus who went out last night but all of you, and for what reason. But did you go down to the crypt together, or only into the church?”

“Why would you say such a thing?” Matteo began, but William rose to his feet, pounding the table so that the empty plates rattled angrily.

“Don’t treat me like a fool! All of you woke up last night, and I know this because you were all sleeping on the floor, in one room, just outside of which Vinnianus and Enrico made so much noise that they also woke Adso from sleeping in a comfortable bed across the corridor. Now, you all went outside, did you not?”

“No, only Enrico.”

“And thus you add a third lie to the lies I have already heard from Vinnianus and from Denis of Lille. You say it does not befit monks and priests to sing in three parts— is it any better for you to tell three different stories? Now, let me tell a story of my own. Vinnianus believes he has an Abbot’s authority over you all. Adso, what does the Rule prescribe when a monk is arrogant and disobedient of the Abbot’s authority?”

“The Abbot must coerce him at the very first offence corporis castigatione, knowing it is written: a fool is not corrected by words,” I said, recalling, along with these words, the embarrassing chastisement by which I had learned to step lightly in the kitchens after dark.

“Therefore the three of you took Enrico out to be beaten, and to impress upon him the gravity of his offenses, you brought him into the crypt.”

“No!”

“Where then?”

Matteo looked about him as if he was trapped, which indeed in a sense he was, since William seemed already to know so much of what he wished to keep secret. Not seeing any escape, however, he bowed his head and explained in a low voice that they had brought him into the church, to pray for forgiveness before the altar.

“As for the crypt,” he went on, “I swear, I don’t have the key. I can show you the key to the church—”

“I’ll take that,” said William, holding out his hand for it. “I suspected the canons had given you one, since you run so many of their errands, but it is especially difficult to conceal such a thing while climbing down a ladder.”

“We left him there in the nave,” said Matteo. “Believe what you like, but that’s the truth. Vinnianus laid on the strokes with a cord, and then told him to kneel on the cold floor and pray the rosary until he had repented his sins.”

“And the three of you came back to the almshouse together?”

“We meant to, but as we stepped out of the church, we saw the night watchman with his lantern coming across the square, and since it was well past the hour of curfew, we had to hide ourselves until he went by. I ran into the alley that leads to the street of the glassblower’s guild and after a while, when I heard the watchman go away, I came out into the square again, but I didn’t see the others, so I returned by myself.”

“Were they here in the almshouse when you arrived?”

“No, and when I lay down to sleep, I was so exhausted by having to wait outside in the cold that I must not have woken up at all when they came back inside. They were both back in time to wake up for Matins, though.”

“And since you all woke up together, you concluded they had been there all night, and none of you had gone back secretly to stab Enrico in the side.”

“Jesus forbid that one of us should do such a thing!”

“And yet,” William observed, “He permitted exactly the same thing to be done to himself. Come, I hear the Vespers bell.”

And so we went to church, Matteo following the two of us at a little distance, his cowl pulled over his face as if he regretted speaking.

**VI**

_In which the new music is contrasted with the old, and William likens the church to the mind of a man._

Within the cathedral, it was already growing dark, but before the altar, a great array of candles gave off a brilliant light, as if to signify Christ the light of the world. By this light I could see dimly the depictions of Augustine and Boethius and the blessed saints in heaven which were depicted as I have already described them upon the right wall, and meanwhile the torments of the damned on the left. In this flickering glow, they moved as if alive, the blessed appearing to rise through clouds of gold while the damned souls struggled as if the mosaic flames that consumed them were burning in truth.

Then the canons, lined up in the choir stall, began suddenly to sing, and as I heard them, I realized for the first time what was meant by the ars nova. For they burst forth in a great tumult of sound which was like the noise of the sea, like the east wind, like the thunder that splits the cedars of Lebanon and shakes the wilderness. Their voices rose and fell against one another as the warp and weft of a loom are twined and separated, and indeed, at first I tried vainly to follow a single voice within the great melody they were making. I could perceive at certain points that one voice would sound a high note while the greater body of the choir sang a lower one, and this higher voice I perceived to be that of Denis of Lille, but then the voices would join again, so that I could not hear clearly any particular word that they uttered. And listening to them, I seemed to hear the angels of the mosaic flying around the throne, et audiebam sonum alarum quasi sonum aquarum multarum.

I wondered about how Vinnianus was taking this display, since Denis had told us that the old man’s threats and remonstrations had forced him to leave the choir. Looking to one side of me, however, I saw only the cowl drawn low over his face, and he stood so straight and still that I could not have told whether there was a man beneath his robe or a statue.

But from these troubling thoughts I was drawn again by the sweet concord of sound, which formed such a melodious union that I was filled with awe. For the music had been fashioned with such skill that to listen to it was to be borne above the earthly sphere and hear the very sounds of the celestial bodies revolving, each at an equal speed, making in their orderly revolutions the seven notes whose ratios fall into the great symphonias of the diatessaron, the diapente and the diapason, and thus demonstrate that the universe itself is founded upon reason, and through reason generates a pure and heavenly music.

As the song continued, I began to be relieved of my tumult, for as Plato explains, modest and orderly singing has the power to calm and to refresh. For since the ears are the organs most sensitive and open to outside influences, through them the rhythms and modes of music can penetrate to the soul. Thus, indeed, Pythagoras calmed the anger of a drunken reveler who sought to break into a house, for, realizing that the youth was affected by a dance composed in the wild and savage Phrygian mode, he persuaded the lyrist to adopt a milder melody, which restored him to his senses. So, attending to the graceful conjunction of the voices, I ceased to be puzzled and frightened by the melody I was hearing, though still unable to distinguish the different parts which were incorporated within it.

And indeed, I felt as if my body itself were being lifted toward the golden ceiling above me. I have read that, while someone listens to music anima volente, at the same time he is captured by it so that he produces involuntarily a bodily movement which is in accord with what he hears. Thus the trumpet and drum give rise to marching, the lyre and cithara dancing, the bagpipes drinking, the shawm and the tibia weeping. And from all of these it is clearly apparent that music is joined to us by nature so that we cannot be free of it, even if we wished to be.

In this way I stood in rapture, caught up in what I was hearing, but after a while, disharmonies began to creep in among the harmonies, as if the taste of rottenness had intruded within sweet fruit, or a spring day were to become suddenly overcast with clouds and frigid rain. In these faults, the voice of Denis again became discernible uno ex multis. Even at Melk, where I was taught to sing only the plainchant and the organum, the precentor had always sternly maintained that proper singing requires practice and discipline, for religious songs are spoiled by negligence and ignorance, by harsh or lazy singing, by false singing which is not on pitch, by the sounding of incorrect notes, and by errors in timing. This new style was more complex by far and I judged that it demanded even greater skill. Denis must have been persuaded to rejoin the choir only after Enrico’s sudden death, so that his abilities were lacking.

For the rest of the service, therefore, the choir returned to their usual practice of the chant, and I considered within myself which style I thought the best. Vinnianus was certainly correct that the chant had a sonorous gravity which impressed upon me the seriousness of the holy words. Moreover, I could understand each one with total clarity as it was uttered. On the other hand, perhaps through overfamiliarity or the lateness of the hour, I found myself hearing some of them without attending fully. In the new style, however, the alleluias leapt toward heaven like birds, the misereres rang like great bells, the Domines roared out like lions. But though my attention was rapt, I could understand only a few words amid the many.

At the end of the service, the canons, carrying their lit candles, walked from the choir stalls out of the church. As they passed, Vinnianus pulled back his cowl so that his face was visible. He stared out at Denis, and though I could see only the back of his head, his eyes must have communicated some message of fear, for even in the dim light, I saw the Frenchman’s face whiten.

I was suddenly conscious of how near I stood to Vinnianus and how much taller and more powerful he was than I. The air of the cathedral then seemed close and stifling to me, and it was difficult to restrain myself from leaving my place as we filed out into the cold. Not eager to go back to the almshouse, I drew my master a little way aside.

“Who is right?” I asked him. “Vinnianus, or Enrico and the canons?”

William sighed.

“As usual, Adso, they are both right in one way and wrong in another. You have heard the new style now. What do you think? Is it lascivious and effeminate, inspiring the fleshly appetites?”

“I would not say so. Yet I felt a great pleasure in hearing it, which perhaps is some kind of worldly desire.”

“Vinnianus would say so.”

“What would you say?”

“Men like that give the name of lust to every sort of pleasure, whether good or evil. Because we Christians are commanded to hate worldly things, they make a virtue of hatred in itself, while, properly considered, anger is virtuous only when reason directs it, and as Chrysostom says in a sermon, he that is angry without cause puts himself into danger.”

“So you disagree with him. That comforts me, since I don’t like to think of the joy I felt as sinful. But Vinnianus also said that the new music obscures the holy words, and that it is not proper for the church to speak in many voices.”

“The church has always spoken in many voices. Jesus called the apostles, and what did they do? They fought like cats in a sack! Peter was given the keys of heaven, and Paul argued with him bitterly over the circumcision and wrote in an epistle that he wished his pudenda cut off. You will say that the argument of Vinnianus concerns the holy scriptures, which must surely have a single meaning since they are written down. But even there, where we read the same words, we do not read the same book. Heretics and blasphemers cite the bible, but they take no more truth from it than a mouse that nibbles on a communion wafer eats the flesh of our Lord. But even pious and worthy men disagree, and raise their voices in disagreement, until from their mingled arguments, the right doctrine emerges. If it does.”

“Then why do you say this style is wrong as well as right?”

William tilted his head as he did when considering how to put a difficult idea into words.

“When I spoke of many voices a moment ago, I meant that in a way, the church speaks to itself. Imagine that the church is a man, and all these preachers and philosophers are his mind, which is made up of many parts, sometimes united and other times conflicted. But as a man has one set of wits and senses, his mind concentrates on a single thing at a time, even when he is not sure of the meaning of what he sees and the actions he ought to take.”

“Aren’t such conflicts just heresies, which draw those who believe them outside of the church?”

“Many of them yes, but heretics still claim to belong to the church, and from their point of view, they are the true Christians and we the heretics. In a sense, we all agree that there is only one church; we just disagree over which it is.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I said ruefully, for not long ago, I had met heretics who seemed just as zealous and faithful to their false doctrines as we true Christians are to our own.

“But this music is different,” William continued. “When a group of townsmen sing motets in a tavern, they use the same skills and sciences that Enrico studied to fashion harmonies for the canons. This science is taken from Pythagoras and Boethius and the ancients, but we are beginning to go beyond them; what we heard just now is something new, something Pythagoras could not have created, and knew only dimly the terms to describe. You know, I hope, that music is a branch of mathematics?”

“Yes, music, geometry, astronomy and arithmetic,” I said proudly, for I had been taught all four.

“Yes, and these are considered as mathematical since their objects are abstract quantities, not created things with their various imperfections and accidences. But this means that music is something the church thinks about, but it does not belong to the church; it is accessible to reason alone, and so there must be music also among the Pygmies and the Arimaspians and the men of the antipodes, if they exist. And so churchmen might be forced to learn these arts from secular men, even from Antipodeans, for students of every art are drawn to the master who knows the most about what he is teaching. Now, for the first time, the church must not only speak to the world, but listen to it. It is as if this one man of the church has emerged from his solitary study into a great hall full of many men babbling in a great confusion of tongues.”

“So the church will be swayed from its purpose?”

“No, Adso, that at least I do not fear. Faith, hope and charity will endure to the end. But I think there is a great difference between the thoughts that conflict within a single mind, addressing a single question, and the words of the many men in the hall, who don’t even understand each other’s languages. Perhaps in the last days, the world will be filled with men who don’t read the scriptures at all, men whose quarrels and blasphemies make no sense to us.”

“Won’t they be heretics too?”

“They will be outside the church, and in that sense heretics. But they won’t argue with us as heretics ought to; far from claiming to be the true church themselves and accusing us of heresy, they might not even understand what we mean by ‘church’ or ‘heresy’, or they will assert that these are syllables without any meaning, like the barking of dogs. They, like us, will know of music and geometry and astronomy and arithmetic, and we will be able to discuss these with them. But I fear that they will listen to songs like the one you just heard and feel the same pleasure that you felt, without attributing it to the glory of God, or even understanding why you should do so.”

“Then the Pope is correct to suppress this music after all,” I said regretfully, for I could not understand how anyone who heard it would not feel, as I did, that it glorified God.

“Ah, the Pope, the Pope.” William laughed gently. “If Jacques de Cahors were to write in a letter that two and two made five, would it become true? The science of pitches and intervals and symphonias will not go away simply because he declares it anathema— especially because the Emperor’s theologians disagree with him.”

“But the hour is getting late, and cold too,” he broke off, observing that I was starting to shiver a little since the sun was beginning to sink. “You must return to the almshouse, and I had better go find Gregory, to tell him what we have learned and get his help in finding the killer. I fear we will have to search the almshouse for the missing key to the crypt, which will require the Emperor’s authority, and we had better start tonight, before the guilty man realizes he ought to throw it away.”

“Must I stay there alone?” I asked. “It seems that the person we’re looking for is a Benedictine, either Vinnianus or Denis or even Matteo, and in any case, I will be asleep in the same house with him while you and Gregory are not there.”

William rested his hand on my shoulder.

“There is something in what you say. On the other hand, I fear that Gregory might be distracting himself from this disaster somewhere where it is not licit for monks to go, least of all novices. Still, I suppose it will hardly be the worst thing you have seen on this journey. But stay close by me, and remember that the flock of Christ are as sheep in the midst of wolves, who must be wise sicut serpentes and simple sicut columbae.” 

**VII**

_Concerning a place not licit for monks to go, an impious song, and a discovery._

We stopped at the almshouse long enough for William to find Gregory’s manservant Peter, who confirmed William’s guess about what his master was doing.

“Said he’d spent all day grubbing through saints’ toenails with that rabbit Eustace, begging your pardon,” he mumbled, rubbing his eyes, from which I gathered we had woken him. “Said he was no closer to catching the killer, and that the Emperor’s mass was going to be ruined, and he was ruined, and he was going to drink until he didn’t care anymore.”

He yawned, scratched at his hose, and pulled his boots on, bundling his heavy cloak around himself, then led us out along the edge of the square. Halfway down, he turned into a narrow alley, from which the shadow of the cathedral tower was no longer visible above the high walls of the houses which leaned in on both sides. From here, we continued through a series of turns and twists which utterly puzzled me, so that I no longer knew how far or in what direction we had gone. I walked closer to William, and reminded myself that with him and Peter together, we would surely be able to find our way back. At the same time, my mind was troubled with thoughts of the women of Pavia from whose irresistible clutches I must take care to keep myself, and I whispered to myself a prayer that I not be led into temptation.

Our destination was marked by a bunch of vine leaves fixed to a pole, and next to it a rack of leather balls and crude wooden pins set up in the street which must have been some sort of game. Peter knocked heavily at the door, which was opened by a man in a grubby apron who grinned widely as he looked us up and down.

“A brown friar and a black one together? Well, strange birds flock together, these winter nights. Come in, my masters, come in!”

The little room inside was violently hot, lit by a roaring fire and packed full of people, some sitting at rude trestle tables while others leant against the walls or stood with arms around one another’s shoulders. If I had thrown one of the leather balls from outside among them, I think it would have been a long time before it found its way to the floor. As I looked among them for Gregory, I saw the room filled with all the colors of the wildflowers in a summer meadow. Some men’s clothing was richly trimmed with sable and marten, fox and rabbit, and with the feathers of swans, pheasants, herons and cranes. The buckles of their belts were fashioned in the likeness of dragons, griffons, leaves, stoats, stags, keys and serpents, and they wore leather pouches and sheaths for their knives, which were likewise decorated and embroidered with beads, embroidery, fretwork, tassels and fringes.

The garments of most of them, however, were faded and worn, so that the dye was brighter lower down, where the sun and rain had not worn it. These men wore plain rope belts which were tied and not buckled, but they appeared equally merry as they shouted jests back and forth, none seeming to take any notice of us as we came inside.

Among them, also, I caught sight of a few women, seated among the men and conversing with them. Their hair was unbound and their dresses hung immodestly over their shoulders, leaving the imagination to fill in without difficulty the details which they barely managed to obscure. In truth, I was not so taken with their beauty as I had been by the young woman with whom only a few weeks ago, I had (God forgive me) violated my vows, and yet, such is the urge that brings a dog back to its vomit that I felt my breath and the beating of my heart quicken, and my mouth was suddenly dry. As I continued to look about the room, in which, as I told myself, I was searching for Gregory, my disobedient gaze kept falling on one woman or another, as if to ask which of them was most beautiful or perhaps which was the most abandoned in her sinfulness. And finally one of them, whose dress was of a golden color, looked up and caught my eyes with her own, which were of a warm and lucid brown, and waved her hand, beckoning me toward her.

At this, my cheeks grew hot and I was filled with shame, which is said to be averse to wantonness, a stranger to any kind of excess, the friend of sobriety. Without willing it, I cast my eyes downward, taking through bodily reflex the same action which reason (if I had been aware of it) would have recommended. Mastering myself, therefore, I resolved to let William and Peter search for Gregory, and to keep my eyes to the ground. This, I perceived was covered in straw and sawdust, which though at the very corners of the room it was still clean and fresh, had been stained with all kinds of dirt and filth carried in from the street, as if God had seen fit even in this place to provide a parable of the wretchedness of sin from which we must strive to preserve our souls.

But since I had deprived myself of the faculty of sight, this served all the more to intensify the operations of the other senses, which, as Avicenna writes, each provide their impressions to the same organ of estimation, so that the lack of one makes more space for the others. While I had been looking around the room, I had heard nothing but a loud and incomprehensible bellow, but now I could make out, first, the landlord’s voice raised above the commotion to offer to broach another tun of wine, or to bring out more bread and olives. From another corner came a coarse assessment of the quality of the wine, to which another responded in turn:

“If you hate it so much, I’ll have yours!”

But these were merely the loudest voices among the company, and the rest of the conversations continued without interruption, so that from the people closest to me I caught snatches here and there, such as, made off with half a ham, so I took my… nothing but a thief, and your dice are… married him, but she never… and from the furthest corner of the room I heard the stamp, stamp, stamp of boots beating out a rhythm, above which for a moment, a drunken voice raised itself in song:

_Ego sum abbas Cucaniensis, et consilium meum—_

Before he could go on to describe the sodden fraternity of which he claimed to be Abbot, I heard the men nearest him shout him down, calling him a drunk and a bad singer, which was true, since his voice cracked and wavered so that I was forcibly reminded of how Denis had recently disrupted the canons’ service with his want of practice, and this memory suggested to me some other similarity, which I tried to place but could not quite fix within my mind. The next instant, I heard the voice of Gregory of Strasse raised above the rest, asking why in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ they had come to take him from the tavern where he had finally gotten warm and started to forget his troubles.

Since I now knew where to seek him, I felt safe in raising my eyes again, and saw him sitting on a low stool at one of the tables with a cup in one hand, and throwing down a pair of dice in disgust. Sitting on a stool next to him was a woman who looked at him adoringly, and he touched her cheek in such a lascivious farewell that I had no doubt we were taking him, not only from his wine, but from other sinful temptations, or rather from sins, since it seemed to me that he had resolved already to action in a positive sense.

Holding slightly to Peter’s arm, he staggered back towards us, and with William holding open the door, we emerged again into the cold. The chill was refreshing after such heat, and seemed to revive Gregory slightly from his drunkenness. I saw him pat himself all over, checking that his purse, his knife and all his other possessions were in their accustomed places, and shake his head quietly, muttering to Peter that he was a fool to play dice with such cheats and sharpers. Nevertheless, he seemed happy as he said it, and assented cheerfully enough to William’s request that the two of them return to the almshouse to search it over for the key. As we fell back into silence, he burst out merrily in the song I had heard the first part of in the tavern, declaring himself the Abbot of Cockaigne, high priest of the order of Dicers.

As he witlessly repeated this tune over and over, suddenly my mind made the connection which I had missed.

“Master,” I said, “The tune that Gregory is singing? I think it is the same one as we heard in the canons’ service. Or at least a part of it, the portion of just one voice, without the chant below or the middle voice. Do you think it could be?”

“What?” Gregory and Peter, walking ahead of us, fell silent and turned to look back.

“Keep singing!” shouted William, in a tone of such command that Gregory without even thinking about it entered into the song again. As Gregory sang, William hummed, first high and fast, then low and sonorous, trying to discover how the cantus firmus might be fitted around such a melody.

“It is certainly possible,” he said finally. “I can’t see it clearly; I was never a particular student of music. But it could be the same.”

“What would it mean if it was?” asked Gregory.

“Well, Adso? Perhaps you could form some hypotheses.”

“Perhaps the drunkard learned his tune from Enrico. Or perhaps he himself learned it from a company of drunkards. Certainly if it is the same tune, it must have a common source.”

“And what would this imply?”

“That Enrico drank and gambled?”

“Not certain, but it seems unfortunately likely. It fits well with Eustace’s missing reliquaries, for one thing.”

“If Enrico might have been involved in some kind of gambling dispute,” I said hopefully, “Perhaps Vinnianus didn’t kill him after all. Maybe it was not even a monk.”

“So, you reason thus: Somehow he had arranged to meet a confederate by night and they went down to the crypt, where they argued, and then this other man stabbed him.”

“It could be true,” I said, a bit defensively, for I knew by now the tone he used to sum up an argument he disagreed with.

“So it could,” he replied, not unkindly. “But I think you argue more from desire then evidence, since you would like to be relieved from the fear that one of our brothers in Christ committed the murder. In any case, it is built on a foundation of sand, since the premise is only assumed— we suspect that the two songs are the same, we do not know.”

“Then we’ll check the part books,” I said impatiently. “We can read the neumes out ourselves and see exactly what Enrico wrote.”

William cleared his throat and murmured to himself for a moment, which I knew from experience was a sign that he was about to object, but before he could do so, Gregory broke in.

“The boy is right. Peter and I can look through the almshouse, but if we find nothing, we’ll be no better off than we are now. The Emperor will be here tomorrow, and if we don’t have a murderer to show by then, I may as well shave the top of my head and join your order myself.”

“Very well,” said William. “I still have Matteo’s key to the cathedral door, and we’ll take your lantern, which you won’t need once we reach the almshouse. If we look through the part books tonight, you can have another hour or two to roust out drunkards and tavernkeepers in the morning.”

As we emerged from the alley back into the square before the cathedral and turned to go our separate ways, I heard him muttering to himself.

“Up all night again, I suppose. Well, a monk should sleep little and trust in God. But there are too many such dens of vice in Pavia for Gregory to visit them all tomorrow, though I suspect he will enjoy the attempt.”

**VIII**

_In which Adso’s hypothesis is tested and, by various means, certain mistakes of reasoning become clear._

I held the lantern as William unlocked the heavy door of the cathedral and lifted the bar. Pulling it a little way open, he slipped into the nave, and I followed him, hearing the sound of our footsteps echo quietly in the emptiness.

As we moved forward, a shadow flickered wildly across the floor and I heard a flapping noise, as if a demon from the mosaic wall had flung itself free and was beating its great leathery wings in its rush to get at us.

“Vade retro!” I said, holding up the lamp, but saw nothing.

“Calm yourself, Adso,” said William. “The workmen have stretched a sheet over the broken roof of the north transept to keep out the rain, but as Eustace was complaining, they are lazy rogues who don’t know their trade— it has come loose in the wind. Bad for the paintings, but no harm to us. Come, the tower is this way.”

The stairway was cold and slippery, the steps worn smooth by centuries of footsteps. I braced myself with one hand against the wall, holding the lantern carefully with the other, fearful of what might happen if I dropped it. I still remembered with terror the fire which had consumed the library of the monastery of which I have previously written. For such terrors affect even animals that have seen some calamity and then fear the circumstance by which it occurred, and therefore they are not held to be the work of reason, but of the animal soul which is possessed by beasts and men alike. So, while I argued to myself that this building was damp and had no stacks of paper to act as kindling, while that one was dry and well-supplied with fuel, I was unable to comfort my unthinking fear except by climbing more quickly. And as I went, I felt the walls close in around me like the plague of darkness in Egypt which it is written was so dense ut palpari queant.

At last I reached the top of that unpleasant passage and emerged into the loft. In one corner, a rickety ladder pointed the way yet higher up, to what must be the bell-chamber, for as Eustace had said the bell-ropes hung down next to it, with spares coiled up on the floor beside it. On the other side were some wooden shelves, one holding some manuscripts and another piled up with candles, spare vestments and whatever other odds and ends the canons had seen fit to store there, piled up in a great heap. Picking gingerly through this, William took two long tapers and lit them from the lantern, then set them out of the draft.

“Now we have light to read by, let us see what we have,” he said calmly.

I marveled again at the temperament of this man who, having climbed forty steps in the dark to search out the reasons for a murder, could settle himself to read as calmly as if he had just reopened the Sententiae to remind himself of some gloss on the trinity. Yet I do not think his manner was feigned. Rather, he was indeed a man who loved books, or perhaps it is better to say (since I have spoken before of those who lust after books as drunkards do wine or misers gold) that he loved what books contain, which is to say, an understanding of the world.

He pulled out the topmost manuscript eagerly and we bent over it together, turning over the pages to find the beginning of the psalm we had so recently heard at Vespers. As with any work of music, the pages were ruled into staves, each one with an ornamented capital at its head, upon which the neumes were marked to show the ascents and descents of the voice. In an ordinary chant book, the words would stand below the pitches, so that each syllable would take on its proper pitch, but here the lines of text were sparse indeed, and the first line of notes had below it the words _Domine_ and then _triplum_.

“I don’t understand how this is to be sung,” I confessed. “It seems to me that there should be three neumes, _Do-mi-ne_ , and here are a whole line of them.”

“It must be a melisma,” William replied. “Just as you would mark the end of the line by stretching the final syllable across many notes, here you must fit your _do_ and _mi_ and _ne_ over an entire line.”

“How am I to do that?”

“By practice and learning, like any such art. Which is to say, I don’t know. It seems to me that this is why the canons prized Enrico’s skill so greatly. But here is the middle voice, and here at the bottom is marked _tenor_ , which is so called because the singer must hold on to the plain pattern of the chant. This one, I think, will be easier to sing. I will try it, and you see if you can puzzle out the motion of the top one by listening. I think it must fit into the metrum of the lower one, just as planets turn in their epicycles within the larger movements of the heavenly sphere.”

So we began, and, I believe, managed to commit within the first minute all the faults of bad singing which I have already discussed. Partly this resulted from lack of skill, and partly from William’s singing too fast, for (as we discovered) the cantus firmus in this style must proceed so slowly that the tenor holds onto his single _do_ for as long as he might normally take to read an entire line of the psalm.

But we were not trying to impress, nor even to pray. I had only to stumble through a line or two of the melody without entirely botching the rhythm before we looked at each other in agreement.

“It’s the same,” I said proudly. “So, the sand I built on has turned to stone; Enrico was in the company of gamblers and drunks, and one of them must have killed him.”

“I admit the premises, but not yet the conclusion,” William replied. “How did Enrico’s confederate know he would be in the cathedral at that hour, when he himself did not know he was going to be beaten? And why, once they had met, did they go down to the crypt, if they intended to rob the treasury? Still, we have learned something, which is helpful, if not likely to profit us before midnight tomorrow.”

“It is a pity I won’t be able to hear such a mass,” I said. “Even with Denis instead of Enrico, I think it would be a wonderful thing. Look, if a single psalm takes up this many pages, how long must an entire mass be?”

William turned over the leaves again, soon coming to the introit of the mass and the Kyrie, which took up a whole sheaf of pages, and then paging through the Gloria. The collect and the reading from the evangelium were written as simple plainchant, but the gradual was again set for three voices in the new style. Here he paused and frowned gravely, as if what was written there did not please him, and began to mutter uneasily to himself.

“What is wrong?”

He looked up at me, his face shadowed as he turned away from the candlelight.

“I am worried we have gone astray again. It seems a particular weakness of mine to test every beam and pillar of the foundation except the rotten one. But let’s go through it again: the Emperor’s mass is to be tomorrow at midnight.”

“Yes, if Gregory can catch the murderer before that.”

“Never mind Gregory for now. Here is the Emperor’s mass, which is to be said on Christmas at midnight. And here is the gradual.”

“So I see.”

“Read me the first line, simply to prove that I have not gone blind, or mad.”

“It begins _tecum principium_ ,” I said hesitantly, still not understanding why he should ask such questions.

“Then why did Enrico and Vinnianus argue over the _viderunt omnes_ , which is the gradual for Christmas at noon?”

“Perhaps it comes later in the book?” I suggested, but William, already searching, had reached the end of the manuscript by now and in doing so, demonstrated that it did not.

“I fear, dear Adso, that the fault goes deeper than that. _Viderunt omnes_ , taken de re, is indeed the gradual for the Christmas noon mass. But taken de dicto, it means that everyone will see something. And this, I think, we can interpret quite clearly as a threat.”

“A threat to whom?” I asked, still not following.

“To one of his brothers, I think. They were taking him, by an authority he did not acknowledge, to be beaten and rebuked. One among them shared some secret with Enrico, something the two of them knew and the rest did not. Enrico, wishing to escape his punishment, threatened him with disclosure. But this man resolved instead to ensure his silence more permanently. So you see this hypothesis brings both men, victim and murderer, into the church together and thus explains how they came to meet there.”

“But that means it was a monk after all!”

“If it is correct, yes. But—”

Here William broke off again, and once more I saw his lean, pale face constricted in surprise and displeasure.

“Solvitur ambulando,” he said, in a tone much changed. “Our hypothesis has proved itself.”

Following his gaze toward the top of the stairway, I saw a cowled head rising up from below, even as John stood on the shore of the sea and saw the beast rising up, upon whose head was written the name of blasphemy. Fearful though I was of that constricted passageway, I would gladly have rushed towards it if there had been any way around the man who was approaching, for I feared there was no other way down from the tower. But the staircase was barely wider than his shoulders, and as he rose still further, I saw he was holding a long knife in one hand, a shielded lantern in the other.

As he reached the top, he set down the lantern carefully, then threw back the cowl and let the light shine on his face. It was Denis of Lille.

“That drunk fool Gregory is searching the almshouse,” he said. “But I should thank him for waking me, since he told me by his grumbling where you were and what you were doing. He’ll never find the key, though. I brought it with me. And he’ll never figure out what Enrico really meant without you to help him.”

“If you have been listening to us the entire way up that staircase, perhaps you can answer some of my earlier questions,” said William. “You were the companion who crept out to gamble at taverns with Enrico, yes? He and the other two are hardly of an age or temper to enjoy each other’s company in such pursuits.”

“That’s right,” he said. “We had a merry time of it as first, coming to Pavia from that cold, strict abbey up in the hills. That, and then the hell of the plague. I think I went a bit mad my first month in the city. Vinnianus is a strict old bastard, but with all the time he spends fussing about grace notes and semi-breves, you could walk off with his underclothes and he’d never notice. We sold off a few loaves from the bakery for coin, and that should have been enough for us.”

“But it wasn’t, was it? Avarice is a devil that consumes a man a little at a time, so that in the end he will sell even his own soul for money.”

“I blame the prior, for leaving the key to the treasury under a lectern as if it were a worthless trinket. Without that, we would have kept ourselves in check, but once he got his hands on it, Enrico started playing for high stakes, putting up that relic of Saint Monica against whatever he wanted, knives or belts or purses, things he couldn’t even use once he won them.”

“And so, though you robbed the treasury together, it was Enrico who spent the money,” said William reassuringly, though knowing him as I did, I heard the slight edge in his voice that he used when he meant, by saying one thing, to imply another. Denis, however, went on, speaking more heatedly and gesturing with the knife as he warmed to his story.

“For weeks on end, it seemed that Monica herself had her hand on his shoulder so he couldn’t lose, which only made it worse when his luck finally turned. He lost all the candlesticks and the rest of it trying to get that one relic back, swearing that a few good rolls would put him on top again.”

“But why the crypt? If your dispute was to do with treasure and not music—”

Denis laughed, the sound of his voice echoing unpleasantly in the little chamber and resonating against the bells high above.

“Boethius the musician, is that what you thought? No, it was Boethius the philosopher I took him to see. I meant to tell him, one more time, that Fortune turns her wheel as she likes, that she loves to humble the proud and snatches away her gifts as quickly as she offers them. I didn’t want to kill him, I didn’t mean to. We had been novices together, and nursed each other through the plague year. If he would only have gone back to gambling for coppers— if he had bowed and scraped to Vinnianus a bit, and taken back the threat he made to expose me, I would have let him live. I only wish that I could have.”

“But you couldn’t,” murmured William.

“He couldn’t give any of it up, not the money or the drinking and not the choir either. He would praise God like an angel at Compline and then before Matins he would go out to guzzle wine and sin with women. And despite all that I’ll miss him. Far more than anyone will miss you,” he trailed off, his voice hardening. “Commend your souls to God, and hurry— I must be back before Gregory gets it into his thick head to look for me.”

“We are monks, as you have forgotten to be!” William shouted, dropping the show of sympathy. “Every day and night we put our souls in his charge. Adso, the ladder!”

As he cried out, he rose to his feet, and in one motion swept the candles to the floor. Shadows flew madly across the walls as they guttered out in the draft from above. As I rushed in the direction that he had pointed me, I could hear Denis swearing and groping for his lantern. But even before the room was fully dark, my outstretched hands had found the splintery lower rung of the ladder which connected the tower room to the belfry, and I swear that no squirrel could have scrambled up faster.

Behind me, I could hear the noise of feet running this way and that, so that I did not know whether my master was following me, or Denis, or both, but when I had reached about midway up, I felt the ladder begin to shake beneath me, so that I was certain one of them was close behind. Feeling a hand begin to close on my ankle. I kicked out wildly and heard the voice of Denis swearing under his breath. With energy lent to me by fear, I leapt up from the ladder, praying silently that my foot would not catch the top rung and send me sprawling, but somehow, though I felt my habit drag against it, I landed on my feet on the floor of the belfry.

From there I rushed to the ogive windows which led out onto the roof. Loath though I was to trust myself to those weather-worn tiles, I knew there was no other hope of safety. So, as with a lurching stomach the pilgrim steps aboard ship and watches the solid earth recede behind him, I wriggled through the narrow opening and stepped away from the tower. The roof was canted, but not so steeply that I could not remain upright, and I ran ten or twenty steps, fearing at any moment to stumble and slip to my death, before I dared to stop and look back. I had hoped Denis would not follow me, since he was so much taller and heavier than I. But possessed by that devil which, as William had said, piles wickedness upon wickedness in the hope of making whole what it has lost, he had already emerged from the window and onto the roof, which I saw was indeed strong enough to support him.

Seeing this, I feared first for my own life, and second that he was pursuing me with such vigor because he had already left William bleeding or dead in the chamber below, so that I was the last who could testify to his misdeeds. And so I ran onward again, not knowing where or how I might manage to escape him.

I was midway across when I caught sight of the workings above the north transept. It was mere luck, I think, that I had slipped out of the belfry on that side of the church, for I do not think I could have have crossed the ridge beam without falling, or would have thought to try. But wondering if the workers’ ladder was still in place, I threw myself forward with all the speed I could still marshal. Ahead of me, the moon shone dimly on a few narrow planks which formed a makeshift walkway across the gap. I had many times walked the top of the courtyard wall to impress my companions in Melk, and I told myself that this plank was no narrower or less even than that. As if what I were doing was nothing but an amusement, I stretched my arms for balance, forcing myself to breathe slowly and evenly, and in this manner I stepped out onto the bridge.

Desperate as I was, I did not dare to run, but my slowness gave Denis ample time to catch up with me. I was barely half way across before I felt the pressure of his weight upon the plank. It seemed that either I must rush forward blindly until I fell, or let him come up to me and throw me down (for he would hardly need his knife to murder me if he caught me here), or that he would catch me at the edge of the wall as I tried to find the ladder. But I pressed forward, reminding myself that our Saviour has conquered death, et quos vult, vivificat.

I was still three arms’ length distant from the wall when I felt a tremor in the bridge beneath me and heard the creak of rope sliding across wood. And instantly it was as if I knew what was to happen, for I had dreamed it only the night before, in my vision of the wooden rule. As if I had already seen and closely examined, as indeed I had done within the dream, I perceived that the surface on which I stood was not solid, but tied together from many planks which were slipping apart from one another. Without thinking, I threw myself forward, feeling the bridge shudder and collapse beneath my feet, and reaching for the solid stone of the wall on the far side of the gap. It was only by the grace of God that I caught hold of it, for had my fingers fallen an inch short, I would have slid from the ledge as the damned will slide into perdition on that day quando caeli movendi sunt. And as I clung to the edge of the wall and struggled to fix myself atop it, I heard the voice of Denis of Lille raised in a terrible plunging melisma.

**Epilogue**

William met me at the foot of the ladder and accepted with delight my fond embrace, for each of us had thought the other dead. Though he returned it with equal joy, it was with only one arm that he enfolded me, for Denis had thrust at him in the dark and cut him badly along the other, which now hung at his side, bandaged with a piece of spare bell rope. But in hastening in pursuit of me, Denis had not stayed to make sure of victory, and so both William and I had escaped him.

I asked William whether Denis might have caught onto some dangling rope or beam and so saved himself as the planks buckled beneath him. He shook his head, a look of melancholy passing over his lean features for a moment.

“I went over to him for a moment, wondering if it would be my duty to apply the healing arts or at least to hear his confession. And I am ashamed to say that I was glad not to have to. I am not much inclined to wrath, but to hear the confession of one who, as I thought, had but lately killed you, dear Adso...” His voice trailed off for a second, then resumed in a low tone. “God was merciful in sparing me such a struggle. When I found him on the floor of the transept, neither Galen nor Hippocrates nor all the Arab physicians could have wrung one more word from his body.”

But as we walked back toward the almshouse, my master’s mood brightened, and soon he was discoursing of the herbs and tinctures which the Arabs and Greeks thought proper to treat a wound such as he had received. And indeed over the next weeks, he brought these remedies to bear with such skill that he healed with barely a scar. Gregory, too, was overjoyed at our success. But if Fortune had raised him up for a moment, she dropped him just as quickly, for the next day brought a messenger from the Emperor’s court to say that Louis would not stop in Pavia after all, and was in fact already far south of the city. Fearing that the Pope had already seized the upper hand against him, he had decided to dispense with a show of piety, instead making haste toward Rome.

It was a solemn Christmas mass we had the following night. The canons, having lost in one week their best singer and the patronage of the Emperor, had bent to the will of the Pope and returned to the plainchant, which we sang in unison without even the simple ornamentation of the organum. Matteo seemed to walk and speak as if in a dream, not understanding whether to vilify his erstwhile brother or mourn him. Even Vinnianus, though he growled forth the words of the epistle with his accustomed vigor, kept turning his cowled head as if disbelieving toward the great carpet that had been laid upon the stones of the northern transept to hide the stains of blood upon the floor.

I was comforted, however, by the words of the epistle, that denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ. And proclaiming these commandments with my own tongue, I felt myself among a great crowd of men all joined in one holy purpose. But in the next instant, I thought of all the disputes and controversies which had drawn such bitter divisions among them, and wondered if indeed our purposes were one and the same. Or was it perhaps the case that Vinnianus on one side of me, and William on the other, intended by the same utterance to renounce different desires and look forward to different hopes?

Whatever they hoped for, in fact Vinnianus and the canons were not to prosper in the coming year. Despite their abandonment of the new music, the Pope did not favor their suit in the appeal over the tomb of Augustine. By February, William of Cremona and his monks had taken charge of the cathedral, and though, as it was reported, Vinnianus came to open blows with one of them in the nave, it was not long before the canons were forced to decamp.

As for the ars nova, as William foretold, it has survived any number of bulls and encyclicals. Such devices as long and short notes and part-singing are not permitted at Melk, where the familiar recitation of the plainchant comforts me in my old age as it did in my youth. But guests at the abbey tell me that they are practiced in all the great towns, and many of the smaller ones, for every cantor and choir-master seeks to demonstrate his skill against the others. This is indeed a sign that the world rushes upon its final age, in which men shall strive to excel each other in fruitless contests, transforming into vanity what was once done for the glory of the Lord.

In the beginning, God created all things in a pure state. But we, inheriting the sin of Adam, are of a mixed nature, and so all that we do becomes mixed, inheriting from many substances their different natures and accidences. Where these different parts are arranged in accord with one another, there arise symphonias and harmonies pleasurable to the senses, and we say that of diverse pieces, one form has arisen. But where reason cannot order them, they are drawn into discords and clashes and antinomies.

I fear that this which I have written goes astray in the same manner, becoming first one thing and then another. The world ages, and becomes complex, falling further and further from the nature of God who is simple. And therefore, the records of the ancients tell clearly the things which happened to them, each with its particular meaning profitable for instruction. But the records of the present day are signs whose meaning is obscure, words in a language we know but partly. But let us bless the name of our Lord, to whom all hidden things are revealed, and let us entreat his mercy upon us. Amen.

**Author's Note:**

> uirgiliana dilectissima, I had so much fun working on this piece for you! Thank you for your prompt! Looking at your dreamwidth, I saw that you are interested in early polyphonic music. I had a vague impression that this had been controversial at some point and would provide a good starting point for Adso and William's further adventures. In one of those lovely writing coincidences, it turns out that the very same Pope John XXII from the Name of the Rose had also been the one to ban polyphony in church services! And so, off I went.
> 
> Much of the background, and some very useful thematic building blocks, came from Peter Pesic's "Polyphonic minds: Music of the hemispheres". Richard Holladay's translation of the Musica Enchiriadis and Scholia Enchiriadis was very handy for pretending to know some medieval music theory, as was Anna Marmodoro's article “Peter Abelard’s metaphysics of the incarnation” for pretending to know some theology. My apologies to the assorted other evangelists, church fathers, and scholastics whom I quote-mined, plagiarized and took out of context for dramatic purposes.
> 
> I listened to a lot of great music I'd never heard before while writing this story. My absolute favorite was Guillame de Machaut's "Missa de Notre Dame", but the Musica Enchiriadis channel on youtube (https://www.youtube.com/user/PerUatchet) has a lot of wonderful pieces, conveniently categorized by period and style, which helped to bring the sounds behind all the theory to life.


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